Lt. Colonel Donald Penobscott
Lieutenant Colonel Donald Penobscott was played by two actors, Beeson Carroll and former NFL football player and Tarzan film actor Mike Henry. About Donald Penobscott Donald is introduced in name only at the start of the fifth season. Tall, dark, handsome, and muscular, he is a Lieutenant Colonel whom Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Loretta Swit) meets while she is on leave in Tokyo. She falls madly in love with him on the spot, and he quickly asks her to marry him. Margaret promptly accepts, leading to a falling out with her former flame Frank Burns. Lt. Colonel Penobscott is not actually seen until the season-ending episode "Margaret's Marriage," wherein Donald (played by Carroll) arrives to marry Margaret at the 4077th. Hawkeye and B.J. have a bachelor party for him, and after he passes out from drunkenness, the hosts, also inebriated, decide to play a joke on Penobscott by plastering him from his chest to his toes, intending to tell him that he had broken both his legs during the night. The cast is still on during the wedding ceremony, and he is unable to move without assistance. The wedding is cut short by incoming wounded, which leaves Donald in the mess hall, unable to move in his body cast. As Margaret leaves for her honeymoon, they make a halfhearted attempt to tell her that the cast could be removed, but she doesn't hear them over the sound of the helicopter. He is not seen again until the sixth-season episode "The M*A*S*H Olympics," in which Donald (played this time by Henry) arrives to visit Margaret and ends up taking part in the 4077th's amateur Olympics competition, and almost wins a race against portly Sgt. First Class Ames, but trips over himself while showing off. He is mentioned frequently throughout the 6th and 7th seasons, particularly in reference to problems Margaret and Donald are having. For example, in the episode "In Love and War," a new nurse arrives at the 4077th. After saying she was recently involved with a lieutenant colonel named Donald, Margaret comes to the conclusion that Donald has cheated on her, and she flies into a rage against the nurse Lieutenant Gleason. In "Comrades in Arms," Margaret receives a letter from Donald that was meant for another woman—a letter that says unkind things about Margaret and hints at Donald having an affair with a new woman. Finally, in the season 7 episode "Peace on Us," Margaret announces she's getting a divorce due to Donald transferring himself to San Francisco without telling her. Margaret receives her official divorce decree from Donald later that season in the episode "Hot Lips is Back in Town." Trivia * A painfully contrived epsiodes on part of the shows writers to make sure Houlihan will never find the love she is dispartley looking for; the later episode had Houlihan finding a letter that Penobscot had written to a girl he was dating in the old wrong envelope girlfriend and wife gag. *Penobscot is not only a cheat on Houlihan he is also a cheepskate; the wedding ring Houlihan values so highly was bought by him in Tokyo. According to Mr Shinn.."Guy in Tokyo...makes them by the dozen..cheap setting...easy job... miracle glue.." Thus Winchester remark that the ring was bought in a 5 and dime store comes close to the Truth! Patent 4077 (TV series episode). *Another example of MASH fantasies is that showing Penobscot as a young man in his late twenties with the rank of Lt. Col. According to the 1957 US Army Almanic to become a Lt. Colonel you had to have 21 years in service before rising to this rank! For example Paratrooper General James Gavin of the 82nd Airborne became a Colonel at age 35 in 1942 after spending 18 years in the regular US Army Category:M*A*S*H television series characters Category:Minor characters Category:Visitors and Patients